Peter Schaffter writes:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2020, Serge Baumer wrote:
> > In the om.tmac, the .START macro calls .DEFAULTS unconditionally. Here
> > are few lines of code from the very beginning of the .DEFAULTS
> > definition:
> >
> > . if !\\n[#DOC_TYPE]=5 \{\
> > . ie !d $PAPER .PAPER LETTER
> > . el .PAPER \\*[$PAPER]
> > . \}
> >
> > They are introduced by a commit dated 2018-03-04 to replace the more
> > simple
> >
> > . if !d $PAPER .PAPER LETTER
> >
> > Thus, the new code is in the official 1.22.4 but not in earlier groff.
> >
> > So, what we get here if we're not making slides (i.e. #DOC_TYPE != 5)
> > but have used .PAGE or any of .PAGEWIDTH, .PAGELENGTH separately before
> > .START. If we haven't used .PAPER yet, it's called here with "LETTER",
> > resetting our custom page dimensions. But if we'd called .PAPER, say,
> > before making page size tweaks: it's called again now, destroying our
> > previous work all the same. So, we have a chance to setup our own page
> > size only with slides.
>
> It's astounding how long a bug like this can hang around before it's
> discovered. There are two culprits. The first is that mom has
> been setting the default papersize (letter) in om.tmac itself with
> '.PAPER LETTER' when she should be calling PAGEWIDTH and PAGELENGTH
> separately. The second is that the DEFAULTS clause, above, is
> unnecessary. It's cruft from testing that I neglected to remove.
> When these issues are corrected, PAGELENGTH, PAGEWIDTH, and PAGE
> behave as expected.
>
> One thing to be wary of: PAGEWIDTH only sets the width of the
> physical page. It does not in/decrease the line length (an
> assumption mom does not make), and must be done either by giving an
> explicit R_MARGIN or an explicit LL.
:) Yeah, I got it after а day or two of reasoning WHY that page height
extends to A4/Letter one while width remains mine (my pages are mostly
pocket e-book reader mini-pages, and I use .PAGE with the full set of
args). Then I said: well, man, what you see is not page width. It's
line length.
> > I didn't report this as a bug because I'm not sure that here's no
> > some sort of planned behaviour and that I didn't miss some info.
> > I can create a ticket though.
>
> It is a bug. No need to create a ticket. Most mom bug reports come
> to me directly and go into the BUGS file.
Ok, all reports by mail, as said in BUGS.
> I'll make the necessary changes to the om.tmac in the groff
> repo and to the tarball at the mom site within a day or two. If
> you're in a hurry, you can make the changes yourself. Search
> through om.tmac for the text "Set up a default papersize". Remove
> the line beneath, '.PAPER LETTER', and replace it with
>
> .PAGEWIDTH 8.5i
> .PAGELENGTH 11i
>
> then remove entirely the clause in DEFAULTS, above.
Good. Thanks for the reply, Peter, and thank you for mom.
--
Best regards,
Serge Baumer
